The California Highway Patrol stopped a dangerous Tesla on Interstate 80 operating at 60 mph with its driver slumped asleep behind dark glasses. Officers cited him for unsafe speed, because the Vehicle Code treats him as the driver of a Level 2 car and holds him to every rule of the road.
That settles his liability. The car kept going because Tesla’s defective driver monitoring is… defective. Tesla claims it points a camera at the driver’s face to catch exactly this, and yet it let a sleeping man ride at highway speed behind a pair of sunglasses.
Manufacturers must address foreseeable misuse. That should be obvious. But sunglasses are an even lower bar to entry, because they are standard equipment for California drivers. Detection of standard driver alertness is even more critical than edge cases of misuse. The system can not be called safe if standard conditions fail unsafe.
Tesla recalled more than two million cars in December 2023 to strengthen its driver engagement controls, and NHTSA opened a review in 2024 of whether that remedy even worked. Tesla has made a reputation for its “fixes” being worse than before, its safety and value declining over time.
An NBC investigation has since found 43 videos of Tesla owners asleep or distracted at the wheel, 17 of them from 2026, and Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi has asked NHTSA whether the cabin camera can be beaten with a hat or sunglasses.
Reporters in Solano County just supplied the clear answer, that Tesla failed. The recall failed. The engineering is below the lowest bar.
The company known for burning people alive with defective door designs, after crashing into poles with defective AI designs, had a duty to build monitoring that works on drivers in dark glasses. Instead it has watched driver after driver sleep at highway speeds and done nothing. That’s what the CHP call a violation of basic speed law.
CHP stated, ‘Regardless of any special features a vehicle may possess…drivers are still responsible for the vehicle they are operating.’ The spokesman of CHP added that if a driver is found asleep behind the wheel, they are violating California’s basic speed law.
Basic. Not hard. Not advanced. Basic. Tesla engineering still can’t meet the most basic speed law.
Anyone spreading disinformation like “sleeping at the wheel of a self-driving car” is inventing a legal category that doesn’t exist; repeats Tesla’s fraudulent marketing. California banned saying exactly that in a 2022 law: prohibits manufacturer or dealer from deceptively naming or marketing partial automation features.
Therefore someone repeating Tesla PR there is “no law against it” should be stopped before they are dead and informed that there is “no new law needed, because the driver is fully liable.”
The evidence is clear why Tesla crashes keep going higher, killing more people in less time than ever. It’s the same case as a CEO of a construction company who made bridges that fatally collapsed killing people in cars, except he was sentenced to 18 years in jail while Elon Musk walks free.
The driver-assistance software it sells as “Full Self-Driving” produced 826 reported crashes in the first half of 2026, dramatically up from 476 a year earlier and 180 in 2022, with July 2026 the worst single month on record, after records in May and then again in June. Tesla promised a lower crash rate and withholds the data that would show it; the only number it is forced to publish by law is the count, and the crash count has quadrupled.
